SUMMERVILLE, S.C. — A year ago, dozens marched to protest the Confederate flag a white woman flew from her porch in a historically black Southern neighborhood. After someone threw a rock at her porch, she put up a wooden lattice. That was just the start of the building.

Earlier this year, Annie Chambers Caddell’s neighbors built two solid 8-foot high wooden fences on either side of her modest brick house to shield the Southern banner from view.

Late this summer, Caddell raised a flagpole higher than the fences to display the flag. Then a similar pole with an American flag was placed across the fence in the yard of neighbor Patterson James, who is black.

What’s increasingly annoying about these cases is that outside parties immediately jump into these disputes, to fight them from one side or the other as proxy battles, when it should be settled between the parties directly involved.